Friday, May 16, 2008

Juno Director Goes UP IN THE AIR

UPDATED! I just got off the horn with Jason Reitman's publicist. She did in fact confirm that Jason is adapting the book but that no deal is YET in place for him to direct.

El Mayimbe here with another Latinoreview exclusive…

A little over a month ago, Larry Carroll over at MTV Movies Blog got some clues about Jason Reitman’s next book adaptation. You can read that story “HERE”

Anyway, Reitman went on to say the following…

“Yeah, I’m writing something,” he grinned, cryptically. “I’m going to direct it at the end of the year. And no, I haven’t told anyone what it is yet.” After a few minutes of poking and prodding, we finally got the Oscar-nominated “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking Director” to cough up a wee bit more.

“It’s a comedy and a drama [book adaptation],” he revealed. “Think ‘Thank You for Smoking,’ but instead of political it’s corporate.”

After confirming with my sources, here is the book Reitman is working on which looks to be his next film…

UP IN THE AIR by Walter Kirn

Makes sense because you know who owns the rights to Kirn’s novel and is also exec producing? Jason’s dad - Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) over at Montecito Pictures. Sheldon Turner did a draft of the book adaptation a while back which Ivan Reitman picked up as a spec script back in 2003. Walter Kirn’s other novel THUMBSUCKER was made into a movie back in 2005.

So what’s it about?

One of Amazon’s best books for 2001, Up In The Air is considered a brilliantly diverting novel that peers deeply into the world of modern business and it sometimes debilitating effects on the human soul.

Ryan Bingham’s job as a Career Transition Counselor – he fires people – has kept him airborne for years. Although he despises his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls, “Airworld,” finding contentment within pressurized cabins and anonymous hotel rooms. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss’s desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. Kirn takes on the corporate world's weirdly mystical and paranoid side, its rhetoric of personal empowerment and its messianic devotion to gurus.